FIVE THINGS WE’D LIKE TO SEE

That doesn’t mean ex­pan­sive backs moves and heaps of tries. What we mean is we’d like to see teams be in­no­va­tive and cre­ative in the way they use the ball; in the way they work to their strengths and hope­fully it means they look to keep the ball and take risks with it.

SEN­SI­BLE AP­PROACH TO CON­CUS­SION

In­evitably some play­ers are go­ing to be con­cussed and in­evitably some coaches are go­ing to be tempted to rush key men back into ac­tion. But it can’t hap­pen we need to see coaches set the strong­est ex­am­ple and make it clear that wel­fare comes first re­gard­less of the oc­ca­sion.

QUICK SCRUMS

Some teams love the theatre of scrum­mag­ing the whole set-up-col­lapse-set-up, rit­ual be­fore they ac­tu­ally get a proper con­test. Once they get that con­test, they like to keep the ball in there and see who has the will to still live at the end of it all. Let’s not bother with that chaps please... quick set, in, shove...away.

ENG­LAND SUC­CEED

Look we might have given the im­pres­sion we are a bit anti-Eng­land by pre­dict­ing they could fail to make it out of their pool. We don’t ac­tu­ally want that to hap­pen as the tour­na­ment needs the host na­tion to stay in all the way to the fi­nal. So what we think and what we want are not the same thing. Nor are what we want and what we need. Nor what you have paid for and what you are get­ting.

A MAS­SIVE SUR­PRISE

How good would it be if a min­now could pull off the un­think­able and beat a top ranked side? We saw Tonga beat France at the last World Cup and that was fan­tas­tic. So what about this year...Canada beat­ing Ire­land? Or Ge­or­gia beat­ing Ar­gentina? Aus­tralia beat­ing Fiji..?